Beauty Always Comes With Dark Thoughts
by Fayalargo Winterwoelfin
Summary: Kai, alone, depressed... will this change when he unexpectedly sees one of his teammates again...? KaiRei
1. Power

Disclaimer: I don't own it.

A/N: Kai has long not seen any of the others. At the beginning Kai is alone... reflecting.He is the most interesting character, besides of Rei of course, who will come into the story soon...  
Next chapter will be on soon... I think. The more reviews the faster of course, motivation is everything.

* * *

Two voices in a darkened room, one male (--), the other female(-), both soft and heavy, laden with regret, sadness and finality.

- Do you love me?

-- I don't know.

- Why?

-- How could I speak of something I've never encountered?

…

-You still don't trust me.

-- …

-After all these years.

-- …

* * *

**Chapter 1: Power**

I can't remember exactly how it happened. I guess you could call it serendipity, or fate, or doom. It does not matter anymore. I am alone again.

A heavy autumn storm rages outside. Through the window I see the wind playing its cruel game with the fallen leaves. Pirouettes, Spirals, they dance, they dance, little marionettes, as the wind commands them. A whirling dance, a chasing dance, a stealthy dance. Alone, in pairs, in multiples. A walkaround, a Waltz, a Gallop, they chase over the streets and pavements. Fast or slow, playful or, the leaves dance as the wind commands them. And if the wind tires of its leaves, it throws them aside or it lets them fall uncaringly, wherever they are. It makes little piles of them until it desires the leaves again and it claims them anew. With a tickling breeze it makes them shiver, shatters them with a storm, takes them in its cruel game,its marionettes, and they have to dance, they have to dance as the wind commands them.

I could go out in the wind, as I so often do. Enjoy the power of raging elements, enjoy my own power in facing the storm. It cleanses the filth of what I am from my bones.

The wind can't play with me as it does with the leaves. The wind can't. In the wind, I can, for a time, simply be. The raging air carries away my thoughts, leaving my mind pure and unadulterated.

But I do not go out in the storm. Today is not the day for the illusion of power. I have none and I know it. Although, unconsciously, I do everything I do to be the best as that I can, all in order to have power. Power, over myself or over others. Power is a good substitute for happiness.

Power…

I don't want to end like my grandfather. He was a twisted mad richman, or a rich madman, whatever you want to call him. Even more suitable would be mad rich madman… Seeing as his money was almost uncountable, it was astounding that he managed to be even madder than he was rich.

But he was. And it was I who had to suffer because of him. He is the reason why I still suffer. He had hurt many others besides me, but I was his family. He was supposed to love me. But he didn't; he wasn't able to feel another emotion other than power hunger.

I was not happy when he died, but neither was I sad. Only relieved that there was less evil to haunt this world. Not the way anyone wants to think about his grandfather, but it's true.

My grandfather left this world, but he did not leave me. I still feel the curse of him, the taint of his heirloom, and the imprint of his sick power hunger still flowing in my veins.

I did not understand him when I was young. Power, that was what counted for him. Ultimate power. Money did not really matter that much. It was only a minor source of power and he needed it, but his obsession did not lie in wealth. His favourite tool to satisfy his sick power hunger was fear. He did all he could to make people shiver at the mere thought of him. I have to admit: he was a formidable psychologist; he could have been the perfect villain in each TV series.

I still do not understand what he found in that vision of a world, where every single person cowered in fear of him. He wanted more power than anyone else had ever had, and he wanted people to cringe in fear when he approached. I don't get what he found in that. I never understood it. It's actually a petty reason for wanting the world domination. Why reign the world only to be feared?

But my grandfather was so sick, so mad, and so power-hungry that, except for his obsession, nothing counted. No trust, no friendship, not love. Family? He had a family, but to him, we were not of any value. We were only some more marionettes, with which he could play his cruel game. We were actually more useful than the rest. We were gratis.

Before my father was disowned, my grandfather was cruel, abusive, reckless and uncaring. But when my father quit the family business to follow his dream, constructing beyblades, my grandfather finally cracked. It was my father's fault that I ended up in the claws of my grandfather. Voltaire had failed to have power over his son, but in the end he still had me. With me he made up for all that power he did not have over my father, because he mabaged to have even more power over me.

What I had to go through, as a child and as a teen, before he was finally imprisoned… I don't want to think of it anymore, but still, after so many years, I can't let go of it.

I once thought that my grandfather loved me. When my father left me, I couldn't understand him, I thought he had betrayed me. As a result I looked up to my grandfather, who taught me to feel hatred instead of pain and loss, turning the so-called weak feelings into power.

Power, power, power. I never understood him when I was young. Now I do. I have felt the need for power that distinguished my grandfather. Maybe I had it inherited it, maybe it was education, but I can't deny it. It is there, in me. And it is strong.

My grandfather once alleged that he and I were equally power-hungry. I was from his blood, after all.

I denied it sharply, when he accused me of being like him. I was fourteen, and every fibre in my body hated him and his means of manipulating everyone to serve his aims. Even his own family, even me. Even me.

I cannot believe that I had admired this man, who unfortunately is my ancestor. I thought he wanted only my best. From that illusion I am free now. Effectively so. When I was fourteen and denied his every claim over my body and my soul, I vowed never to become anything like him. That's another illusion I am free of.

Forcibly so.

* * *

-- Why didn't you tell me before?

- I didn't want to hurt you.

-- You didn't know how much it would hurt me later.

-No.

* * *

A/N: Guess what the dialogues mean? I hope it's not boring. More action will come later.

Be nice to me ... it's Christmas approaching... and tell me what you think.


	2. Memories 1

Disclaimer: I don't own it 

A/N: Thanks to all my reviewers: Henry the Magical Pancake, M.S.K., autumnburn, whooptidoo-basil and Ilex-Aquifolium. I aprreciate your reviews very much.

* * *

-- Disappointment is much worse to bear after years than at the beginning.

- I'm sorry.

-- I know.

- …

-- But it still hurts.

* * *

**Chapter2: Memories**

When I was fourteen and denied his very claim over my body and my soul, I vowed never to become any kind like him. That's another illusion I am freed of now. Forcibly so.

I am more like my grandfather than I want, but in one respect at least I am completely different. There is something I need even more than I need power:

Friendship.

Friendship and trust…these two terms go hand in hand, because when I talk of friendship I don't speak of something more serious than the random associations I've formed throughout my life. I speak of the few people I truly and sincerely call friends, the ones I trust. To a certain extent only, I have to admit. My friends do not know much of my past or of my thoughts because…well, they don't have to know… So, I have never been really open with them, not even Rei or Sinamé, but I did trust them.

That I can trust in friendship is something I learned late enough, but I learned it eventually. My team mates and later friends had a hard time to befriending me, because stubbornly, I kept my distance. And I knew why. Sometimes I still think that it would have been better for me and for them had I kept them at a distance; I have done them no good.

This thought vanishes the moment I recall the happiness their friendship had brought me. Compared to the emptiness of my past, even this small amount of is precious. That I gave in to trust them finally was mere incidence, born out of a desperate situation where I decided to have a go at it. It couldn't have gotten any worse at that point. While I do not regret the decision to trust in friendship, I learned not to trust in power. It consumes you or it lets you down. Either way is not pleasant.

So I would rather keep to my friends … at least I was able to relax around them, joke with them and simply enjoy the presence of people who wouldn't harm or betray me.

So it remained always just me who hurt them.

Like Sinamé. The only person I called a friend since I parted from the Bladebreakers. Actually she was more than a friend to me; she was my companion for a time. I would call her my lover, if I dared to use this word. We were a couple for three years. She meant very much to me, and, as with everyone else, I hurt her.

I blame my grandfather for my inability to love, my lack of appropriate feelings. Or is it my own fault?

I don't know love; I have never encountered it apart from the word that comes out of the mouths of others. Love. If I had known it as a little child, then I have forgotten it now; what it means, what it feels like. I don't feel, I can't feel love and I am sincerely sorry for that, sorry for me and sorry for Sinamé. I would have been glad to return her feelings.

I am alone again.

Sinamé and I broke up a month ago.

I stare into my glass, half-full of whiskey. I don't care about the chatter in the inn room around me. I don't care that it smells of cigarette smoke and alcohol. I don't care about the grubby tables and glasses. I only care about my own thoughts. Memories of Sinamé, memories of my friends, my father, my grandfather… everything that I have been, because I don't know what I am… Only memories…

My hand wanders to my necklace, a fine golden chain that is long enough to tuck it under my shirt. I take the necklace into my hands and gently finger the two pendants. My memories…

An oval slice of gold with mine and Sinamé's names engraved on it. Shining metal with little indentations scrapes in form of letters. She gave it to me on our first anniversary.

I should put it away, keep it somewhere I don't see it every day. It's over now, past. Another chapter in my life has come to its end.

But I haven't put it away and I know that I won't do it. I'm not good at closing doors. I have finished many a chapter in the twenty-four years I have lived, but rarely have I closed a door behind me. Memories of everything that has been important to me and that is important to me still, I carry them with me, all the time, leaving the doors slightly ajar.

My life. I hardly ever remove the necklace, but now seems an appropriate moment. After all, I am alone again. One of the pendants, the golden name-tag of Sinamé. It still hurts me to think of her, but the end was inevitable.

And the other… I close my hand around the little object and feel the smooth yet finely crafted surface. The silver metal is still warm from my body heat. It was gift from my father and enclosed in its heart are the other memory pieces I call my own. I gently lay the beyblade-shaped pendant on the table before me. Only I know the exact movement required to open it, which I do now, to look at the enclosed objects.

A piece of blue paint. My triangles. I do not paint the four shark-fins in on my face anymore; I have grown out of such childish habits. The skin of my face is clean now of the smybold, but when I look into the mirror I still see them; and I can't bring myself to throw the paint away. The triangles and everything they symbolize have already become a part of me. Reserved and cold, off-putting Kai Hiwatari.

It's a symbol of the walls I have spent all my life building up around me, walls that now stand stronger than ever. Only a few people have I have seen what lies behind these walls: Sinamé, Rei, and the Bladebreakers, those who were my real friends. And sometimes Tala and the other Demolition Boys, because living and suffering through the Abbey together forms a sort of companionship despite the contrary attempts of the scientists. For those who are not important, for the rest of the world, it is as if I still wore the paint on my face. Distant, different, and dangerous, that's what I am.

The blue paint is as much a part of me as my slate-coloured bangs are. So I keep a piece of it. Because it reminds me. Of where I come from, of what I have been, and of what I still am. My everlasting taint.

* * *

- I was willing to try.

--I know.

-For me, for you.

-- You gave me a chance to try.

- I failed.

--…

- And I hurt you.

-- I knew the risk.

- ...

-- I thought I could give you what you needed. I failed, too.

* * *

I lay the blue paint beside the silver pendant and take the next piece out. An irregular shred of white plastic, barely a centimetre in diameter. I take it in my hand and turn it around carefully, feeling the edges scratch over my fingertips. It's a piece that broke off Tyson's' beyblade when Dranzer hit Dragoon out of the arena. It was the last beybattle I fought against Tyson, the last time I won and the last time I bladed. Leave it to me to end it there. Tyson and I were equal in victories and defeats. Somehow, I would have liked to fight him once again to battle out the winner, but I didn't dare. I feared the air of finality it would inevitable produce that makes you believe that when all your affairs are settled and you leave now, it will be forever. But so I can think that Tyson owns me a battle, and there is hope that we will meet gain sometime. A door I left wide open and maybe, when I am old and grey, I will gather up the courage to find out where he is.

Meanwhile… I put the shred away and take out a small blank piece of paper. It's my most recent memory. I have put it in, because, well… there are two reasons. One is that this represents something I am proud of, something I have achieved, something worthwhile. It's a piece of the paper I wrote my last test on university on. I finished my studies with honour, three semesters ahead of schedule. I guess I have every right to be proud of this one. The other reason is not as happy but still important. It represents the power hunger that I've inherited from my grandfather. Knowledge is power. And power… Even though learning is a harmless outlet for that unwanted desire of mine, there is no way I can deny it for what it is.

Disdainfully I put the sheet away and tuck it under the shred of the beyblade.

I take out another piece of paper from my pendant, this time a happier memory. As I unfold it, I think of Max, whose attitude was so different than mine, but despite his annoying personality I have grown fond of him. There is a little picture on the paper; I got it from him when he tried to cheer me up once. It shows a twisted smiley, one that wears an expression of bare-all-teeth-because-my-cheeks-are-held-up-by-safety pins-and-no-it's-not-a-smile kind of smile.

It absolutely does not remind me of myself.

I refold it and put it to the others. I decide to take another sip from my whiskey and close my eyes as it burns its way down my throat into my stomach. I feel it pulsing through my veins, the golden glow of alcohol, warming me from the inside. Only, the warmth never reaches my cold heart.

I open my eyes and take the next tiny piece out of the pendant. It's a fragment of Kenny's old laptop, the one that accompanied us through so many tournaments and adventures. The computer exploded when Kenny tried to free Dizzi from it. Dizzy could roam freely then, but only days later, she got caught up in Kenny's new laptop. That may have happened by chance or on purpose, I don't know, but the bit beast definitely has an affinity to computers. If I ever see them again, I should them show the piece. They would be delighted; they are nearly as sentimental as I am.

Not that I am sentimental. But I have only this way of keeping memories alive. Memories of happier times, as the present does not give me anything to hold on.


	3. Memories 2

Disclaimer: I don't own it. 

A/N: thanks to my reviewers  
**bffimagine:** Kai is not going to be an alcohol addict, nor does he take other drugs and he isn't smoking. But drinking is a suitable setting for the kind of thoughts he has.  
**tsunami-girl(whooptidoo-basil**): Yes the dialogues are from the breakup. And this story is still going to be Kai-Rei, there was just some background needed. Even Kai would have gotten to know some people in six years...  
**M.S.K.:** You are right. I think I will put that at the end of second chapter.

Enjoy reading!

* * *

(--) female, (-) male

* * *

- We both failed.

-- I'm sorry.

- Me too.

…

--It was worth the risk.

- Despite the hurt? The disappointment?

-- Yes.

* * *

Chapter 4: **Memories and Darkness**

There is only one piece left, the memory of Rei. Rei… I smile at the thought of my best friend, if I could call him that, and I grab the pendant to take out the memory I keep of him.

It's a…

It's not there.

What!

The beyblade pendant is empty.

I look again. The piece is not there. But… how could it be gone? It was there when I last looked. No one except of me has ever so much as touched the pendant. No one.

I feel little flames of panic tickling my nerves. It can't be, my memory can't be gone; my memories do mean so much more than a simple piece of something I keep in my pendant. They are the last connections to my friends. The last possibility to keep them alive in my mind. I have not seen them for so long, and I don't know if I will ever see them again. So I do need the memories. If I ever lost one… I don't dare to think of it. It would mean the same as losing the friend.

I might have abandoned them, but I keep them with me. I carry the memory pieces on my body. Always. To know that I am not completely alone. To know that there are at least some people out in this world that matter to me. So I simply can't lose a memory, particularly not the one of Rei. I cannot lose my best friend. The memory must be here somewhere. I know it! I believe it! I have to believe it.

But where is it?

Where is it?

_Calm down, Kai_, I tell myself.

_I am calm_! I yell back.

_Yes, of course,_ comes the sarcastic reply. _You won't find the missing piece if you are freaking out. Do some breathing exercise or whatever_…

For once listening to my own advice, only out of my slightly desperate situation, I lean back on the uncomfortable stool and close my eyes. I take some deep breaths, filling my lungs with spent, suffocating air. The inn room is full of heavy smokers. It does not help much, but enough for my racing thoughts to slow down to an acceptable speed.

I consider where the memory of Rei could be. It can't be gone. I just know it. I don't lose my memories.

…But…

Fear again stretches its spidery-web fingers to close in on my mind. I ward it off. So much self-control I still have.

I open my eyes and my first gaze lands on the dark brown table, where the necklace and the pendants lie, surrounded by the memories. And there it is!

Rei's memory.

Good.

If I were Tyson I would jump out of happiness, but, being me, my outer appearance remains as calm and composed as ever, betraying nothing of my inner turmoil. Someone watching me wouldn't even have noticed something going on.

If I can say to have ever achieved something perfectly then it would be hiding every emotion from showing on my face. The few people who know me learn to read my mood otherwise. Sinamé had been very good at this. The Bladebreakers not really, except of Rei, who was left the ungrateful duty of translating my mood to the others. I have to admit, I did not make it easy for them purposely, because I enjoyed Rei being patient with the dunderheads.

Sometimes, only sometimes I would let down my mask for my friends and for Sinamé as well. She too had deserved of my trust. Even if I couldn't bring myself to trust her love. Not because I didn't trust her, but because I didn't believe in love, because I still don't believe in love.

I wonder how my memory of Rei has gotten wrapped around the name-tag of Sinamé. It must have fallen out of the pendant without me noticing it, when I was retrieving the other pieces. But still, it's strange. Sinamé and Rei, the two persons that matter, mattered most to me. If I did believe in supernatural esotericism I would have called it a sign, one wrapped around the other. Since I do not believe in it, it's a coincidence. What kind of sign should that be, anyway?

Rei… I peel the soft red fabric from the golden piece of metal and caress it with my thumb. I always liked the feel of it. Of course I never touched it when he wore it, because…well… It is a piece of Rei's headband, the red one he always wore, the one with the yin-yang sign on it. The piece must be from somewhere in the middle, because part of it has black and white spots.

I can't remember how it actually got torn and as far as I am concerned it will remain a mystery as long as I live. Rei can't remember anything either, neither do any of the others. It had been a night, a party, with too much alcohol, alcohol that erases the letters out of our book of life, leaving some chapters without a beginning, some without an end.

I suspect that Kenny knows something about what happened that night. He never used to drink as much as we others did, because he needed to protect Dizzi. He didn't want to put her in danger, while we were passing out on alcohol, oblivious to what we were doing.

I remember, Rei also didn't drink very much, but his cat-like metabolism did react rather fast to alcohol. All in all, the four Bladebrakers were in a right mess that night. I think it's better that no one remembers what happened, judging by the state we were in when we woke up the next day. We may have had a fight or anything else, something that required a process that tore Rei's headband and left everyone of us with feline bite marks and various other bruises and blue spots.

I asked Rei then, if I could keep a piece of his headband. He glanced at me suspiciously, maybe thinking I would make a fetch out of it, but he gave it to me without any further questioning. Rei was sensitive enough to keep quiet when there was nothing to say.

----------------

I put the cloth and the other memories back in the tiny silver beyblade and stroke it thoughtfully. A memory for a memory. The beyblade was a gift from my father for my eighteenth birthday. It's a small model of the first beyblade he had developed, his greatest pride.

Besides of me, as he sometimes tells me. I'm never sure if I should believe him, when he talks like that, but in the end I always decide to. He is my father and after all, he is supposed to love me, or at least care for me. Even if he left me, when I was a child. I'm still shocked by the intensity of the hatred I felt for him. I really believed that he had betrayed me and my grandfather nourished my hatred as much as possible. I learned then, that I could feel hatred instead of pain and loss, turning the so-called weak feelings into power. I didn't know then, that it was a bad kind of power.

I learned it the hard way.

The hatred deprived me of many a pleasant feeling or experience I could have had and now I know that it didn't make me stronger, but it consumed me. Like all negative feelings, it destroys others or oneself, but it can't fulfil you. Bad feelings, hatred, power hunger or desperation, they all have a will of their own. They grow and proliferate, spreading more and more in your soul, their hunger unable to satisfy. And when time comes, you don't have any control over them anymore, because there is not so much of your soul left that could vanquish the evil that had been festering in your own flesh.

I know what it feels like. I have almost been there. At the point of no return. Almost. Some people, whom since then I call friends drew me back from the abyss my soul had become. Black Dranzer.

There is a poem I read some years ago; someone had scribbled it on the walls of the metro. I have copied it down, so I still remember it. Only recently, as I went through the collection of poems I call my own, I read it once again and the words are still clear in my mind.

_What will you do_

_when the darkness inside you is_

_Red?_

_Red,_

_like the sky over the battlefield_

_with grey clouds of burning hazy_

_drafting over marred lands._

_chunks of flesh ripped_

_out of your bloodied soul,_

_bleeding so much, so far._

_drowning in your own blood_

_not your body's but your soul's_

_slowly choked by the venom_

_smouldering from your wounds_

_the oozing slowly, steadily,_

_filling the vessel that carries your soul,_

_your body,_

_until there is no escape from it_

_trapped in the confines of the flesh_

_there is no_

_escape for the eternal soul_

_no escape_

_it's bleeding and it's hurt_

_you are drowning_

_you won't carry no scars from this_

_because you will not survive_

_you will drown in blood_

_your own blood_

_your blood_

_you will drown_

_forever on._

I don't know the author of this one. There was a picture of a grey-white wolf howling to a clouded moon in a snowy landscape sticked beneath it. It could have been a mark of the author or some sticker a bored kid had put there.

I don't care about authors or names or histories, but I like poems. They spare me the effort of putting my thoughts into words, because someone else has done it already.


End file.
